Shameless plug, but related, is the Watsi platform[1] I discovered a few months ago through another HN user. You can read the story of less fortunate but alive people and how much need there is in the world for one another. The founder's talk[2], Chase Adam, which made me a supporter, is a must-see. I guess it's time to rewatch it..
My pleasure. I'm also unaware of a software or service since it seems a bit of a too specific usecase.
I'm doing all this (with no cost) using an AWS Lambda function written in Java which is scheduled to be called daily at 7 am. It basically parses some RSS feeds[1] (or parses html[2] when RSS is non-existent), extracts each article content using readability and packages them all in a daily epub[3] (with a TOC) which is stored in a S3 folder. Then a separate endpoint (the one I use in my X4) is taking most recent N S3 objects from that S3 folder and exposes the OPDS. The only downside of this is that the response time takes about 3 extra seconds since it uses a cold start, but response speed is not important to me.
Using 'OPDS as a news library' works incredibly well with my X4, it takes me under 10 seconds to download and open the epub and should work with any e-ink device that can install KOReader (or any other software with OPDS support). And I love that all articles are inside a single epub and I can easily go to another one from the TOC.
It's probably my most useful personal project and I like that by now it follows the 'set it and forget it' principle but in need, since it's written by hand, it's very easy to customize it: filter out AI/war/finance/local-gibberish/whatever articles, add new 'bridges' to websites without RSS, some articles don't respect html guidelines and need some tinkering, etc.
There was a bit of initial setup extracting tokens for messenger and discord I believe, but now it's smooth sailing. Some issues sometimes correctly mapping ids to usernames / convos make it so some conversations are duplicated for messenger, but when I have time I think some smart reconciliation heuristic will be able to take care of it.
> When you can’t carry an idea forward, you have to climb a hill. You overcome an internal obstacle by creating an external one.
> If you want to achieve cultural excellence, you must live to be 70, and to live to be 70, you must learn to walk every day. Walking is askesis itself—the ultimate form of practice—and all sports are nothing more than a series of variations on the theme of walking. You are facing a long-distance race, not a sprint. You must therefore make your body an ally, and if man’s animality is his mobility, then you are obliged to respect your moving being
This article reminded me of something I've been thinking a lot these past few months, that is having my computer split in 2 modes:
1. work, having everything available in a desktop OS
2. personal, a console-only mode with a few basic functionalities I consider not time wasting: ebook reader, weather forecast, next sport events, 1 TV show episode per day, calculator, calendar, timer, etc
Since I use the extremely configurable awesomewm window manager, this switch would not be hard to implement and have me locked (somehow) based on day of the week or time on work days.
LE: actually, the console-only mode would be more of a menu-only one with something like rofi desktop [1]. Something very minimal and easy to use.
Something I've recently played with is a very 'dumb' android browser [0] able only to open and share links (and refresh the webpage), nothing else. Since I don't trust myself that I won't just click links from page to page I also configured the webview's client to disable links [1]. From this, you may be able to restrict yourself as much as you can since you could set a whitelist set of links you find 'indispensable'.
[1] https://watsi.org/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlT3UhC7NwQ
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